All posts tagged ‘Thanksgiving’

Five days late and now the wrong “turkey” to boot? Sheesh. Must be the holidays. Image: Flickr/ThomasDepenbusch

Is it Thursday already? Oh man, that was some strong Thanksgiving brew. Now that I’ve Rip Van Winkled back to the land of the living, it seems past time to announce the winner of last week’s GeekDad puzzle. For those of you who can’t remember what you had for breakfast this morning let alone the content of last week’s puzzle, here’s a refresher:

2. Kristi, the traitor, has discovered (decided?) as an adult that she is gluten intolerant.

3. Neither Joe nor Zoe is vegetarian.

4. Cameron ate dairy-free cranberry sauce. There is a good chance that even this will disagree with him, but what’cha gonna do?

5. Zoe has no problem with sugar and, dude, the yams are full of it. The yams also have nuts. And Zoe doesn’t eat stuffing

Believe it or not, there were many answers and no incorrect answers this week (er — last week). The answer is, of course:

1. Joe ate Sugar-free Stuffing

2. Kristi ate Gluten-free Yams

3. Zoe ate Nut-free Mashed Potatoes

4. Leif ate Vegetarian Turkey

5. Cameron ate Dairy-free Cranberry Sauce

And as a father, can you guess what I ate? Yep, that’s right: absolutely everything that was left on every plate. The winner of this week’s $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate, randomly selected from the veritable plethora or correct entrants is Heather, who is likely not a dad, per se, and freely admitted to doping: Heather, a teacher, gave the puzzle to her academically gifted 5th graders. Presumably this week the 5th graders are rolling cigars in the poorly ventilated school basement. In any case, the rest of us can use the code GEEKDAD33NG for $10 off a ThinkGeek order of $50 or more.

Eat like a hobbit this Thanksgiving. And be thankful for the geeky things in your life. [Image: Warner Bros. Pictures/MGM]

So you’re a little unhappy about spending Turkey Day with your estranged _________ (fill in the blank family member). And just try to forget that every time you make a pie crust, it just never seems to come out right.

Here at GeekDad, we’re actually pretty psyched by some developments in the geekosphere, as well as stuff that’s going on in our personal lives. So in the spirit of past GeekDad “what to be thankful” posts, let us present a few of our contributors and what makes us grateful:

I’m thankful for …

… the new Hobbit movie, and thankful that it’s coming very soon.

… that we get to live in Middle-earth for three Hobbit films, not just two.

… that new Star Wars movies are in the works (even as I have lots of unanswered questions about how Disney is going to make them. Then again, can the Mouse House do a worse job with Episodes 7-9 than Lucas did with Episodes 1-3?)

… Game of Thrones. Say no more.

… Doctor Who in Your Pocket, Inflatable Cthulhu Arm, Super Awesome Trading Cards and all the geeky silliness over at Archie McPhee.

Image by flickr user floodllama, used under creative commons licensing

Last week while baking muffins with my son’s preschool class, I set fire to the school. Okay, technically I didn’t set it on fire — it was only butter smoke from the tin that set off the alarm, necessitating the entire school of a couple hundred kids filing out to the basketball courts while the fire department arrived en mass.

Anyway, after the holiday break my wife will be back for Wednesday cooking and I don’t imagine it’ll be NEARLY so exciting. Besides, Leif was line leader that day, and he was really, very proud to lead the class evacuation. (I stood there with my large metal bowl and wooden spoon, smelling of smoke and trying to look innocuous.)

All this is to say that the stakes might be just a little bit higher for T-Day this year — the one bonafide holiday per year that I’m officially in charge of the kitchen. What should I cook? Should I be forced to register with some government agency before attempting to cook? These questions come down to commitment. Simply, can I get away with canned sauce and Stove Top, or this year do I need to explore dishes that don’t come pre-packaged at Trader Joe’s?

I can’t mess this up. And when I can’t mess something up that means that rather than relying on my sometimes questionable common sense it’s time for…MATH!

Here’s an equation calculating with absolute mathematical certainty (wink, wink) the effort in hours that you and/or yours need to slave in order to ensure T-Day success.

.

.

• E= What expectations have you set with your everyday meals? Enter 1-10 with 1 being “ramen is beyond us” and 10 being “I am the next Iron Chef”

• KPSYCH= The number of handprint turkeys, thankfulness cards, acorn sculptures, or other kid-created seasonal crafts that hang, sit, or lurk around the house

This runs from almost exactly 24 hours for a gathering of 20 people with high expectations all around, to a minimum of half-an-hour for a family of two with take-out as the norm. However, Thanksgiving is frequently crowdsourced, so please feel free to subtract from a potentially terrifying total the hours that others will likely spend preparing dishes to bring to your T-Day potluck. You may also be able to subtract hours if before dinner you ply your guests with wine—I suggest that good wine in quantity is worth subtracting at the rate of $D/15 with $ being cost of the bottle and D being the average number of drinks consumed by non-pregnant adult guests.

Our parents taught us to open our mouths to say thank you and now that we’re parents ourselves, society has taught us to open our wallets to do the same. Yes, it’s that time of year again: the season of the ask. However, I don’t know about you, but I just opened my wallet and heard the far-off sound of crickets chirping. I’ll be purchasing few indulgences at Heifer International this year to weigh against the year’s sins. More importantly, though, I’m starting to wonder if the yearly giving glut is perhaps just a little artificial — that maybe writing a check to gratitude is the equivalent of buying Disney princess memorabilia at Christmastime to demonstrate unconditional parental love: in other words a thin excuse for something that’s better lived every day than once a year.

And so I followed up on an email thread my wife forwarded me describing a little group here in Boulder, Colorado, trying to make gratitude the norm instead of the exception. If you’re looking for a big, splashy story about saving Thanksgiving, click elsewhere. But if you want something grassroots you can do this holiday season to help your kids experience un-canned giving, by all means read on. Continue Reading “Little Heroes Teaches Thanksigiving With Little to Give” »

Done wrong, frying a turkey can be a disaster. Done right, you get a delicious turkey, cooked in less time that normal oven roasting, with some excitement in the cooking process. My kids love watching the turkey fry. Instead of just our kitchen smelling like turkey, with a gentle breeze, the whole neighborhood gets to smell your turkey.

Displacement

The key to successful turkey frying is understanding displacement. Too little oil in the pot and part of the turkey will be above the oil level and not cook. Too much oil in the pot and it will spill over, making a dangerous mess that would likely cause an even more dangerous ignition. You should not guess how much oil you will need in the pot; you should use SCIENCE to figure it out.

I use turkey brine to measure the displacement. On Wednesday, I put the thawed (or mostly thawed) turkey in the pot and fill the pot with water, salt and spices. Make sure the water level in the pot is a few inches below the rim of the pot. I let the turkey sit in the brine overnight, letting the seasonings flavor the turkey and the brine tenderize the meat. On Thursday, I take the turkey out. Mark the level of the brine left inside the pot. That will be the line marking the oil fill level.

Safety

It’s not fun to have to call the Fire Department on Thanksgiving. The result of liquids being suddenly immersed in boiling oil is volcanic. Oil will bubble out of the pot and spill onto whatever is under the pot, like the burner. If there is enough oil spilling it will come in contact with burner and ignite. I speak from personal experience.

It’s best to use peanut oil. It has a higher flashpoint that regular cooking oil, so it is less likely to ignite.

Make sure the turkey is fully thawed. Frozen turkeys put into boiling oil will usually explode. Even a partially frozen turkey could cause a mess.

Make sure the turkey is as dry as possible. Make sure liquids have drained out of the cavity and pat dry the inside of the turkey. Any water on the outside of the turkey or in the cavity will instantly be turned to steam. Too much water, means too much steam, which means an explosion of steam and boiling oil, ignition, and a Darwin Award.

Use gloves to protect your hands from the splatter of boiling oil. I use welding gloves. They do a much better job than an oven mitt of keeping the flesh on your hands protected from the boiling oil. (They also look cooler.) For the extra geek factor, I also wear lab safety goggles. Boiling oil in your eye will wreck your Thanksgiving.

Be prepared and be safe. Keep a fire extinguisher nearby.

Timing

In my experience, it takes almost as much time to heat up the oil as it takes to cook the turkey in the oil. Usually, I set aside ninety minutes for the oil to heat. It only takes 3 or 4 minutes of cooking time per pound of turkey. So your typical 12-14 pound bird will be cooked and delicious in about 45 minutes. With the help of an assistant, pull the turkey out of the oil and use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature.

Geek It Up

If you want to take it the next level, both for better safety and extra points for apparatus used, try Alton Brown’s Turkey Derrick. Add a stepladder, carabiner, 2 pulleys, and a sash cord to the list of supplies.

Enjoy

Whole fried turkey is the best illustration of just how delicious and grease-free fried food can be. Once you’ve tried frying your Thanksgiving turkey you’ll never go back to roast turkey.

Other Frying Fun

Now that you have a fryer, it’s fun to experiment with other foods. There are always the classics like french fries and fried shrimp. But there also lots of options. Fried Twinkies are fun. (With the pending demise of Hostess, Twinkies are becoming a rare treat). There is also the odd fried Coca-Cola that won an award at the 2006 State Fair of Texas.

This week my wife made a new Pandora station. It seems seeded on Donald Duck and a too-cute Minnie Mouse warbling something about the joy of Santa Claus and/or buying battery powered things that break easily. (Don’t tell Mickey.) Basically it makes me want to kick puppies. And I really, really like puppies. All of which means it must be nearly Thanksgiving. This is terrifying for many reasons, including but not limited to the fact that we’re hosting a friends and family jamboree and exacerbated by the fact that we live in Boulder, Colorado. The first necessitates quantity and the second means that various attendees are likely to be gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, sugar free, and with various forms of nut, lactose, and shellfish allergies. (Apparently, though, no one respects the depth and severity of my Disney Christmas carol allergy.)

Until there is a recipe app that cross-references the needs of our many diners, we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way: by feeding everyone everything and then noting which guests head for the emergency room. Okay, I’ve been overruled. Instead, we’ll use logic. Here are clues that will allow us to discover who can eat what. Let us assume, though it’s certainly not true in practice, that each person is only insensitive to one ingredient and that each food is without only one ingredient.

What do you get when you combine the culinary curiosity of Alton Brown’s Good Eats with the madcap misadventures of the MythBusters? In tonight’s Thanksgiving episode of the Discovery Channel’s perennial geek favorite, Alton joins hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage to test some food-related myths, and he fits right in with the M5 Industries crew.

The three hit the road to test a myth about cooking Thanksgiving dinner right under the hood of a car. They also investigate what may be the fastest way to cook popcorn, using a gnarly-looking Chinese pressure cooker and a bomb suit. Check it out:

Meanwhile, Kari, Tory and Grant test the age-old Thanksgiving chestnut about tryptophan causing drowsiness after a big turkey meal, and find out whether everything really does taste like chicken.

The build team’s myths were more educational, but they seemed a heck of lot less fun to test. While Grant and Tori stuff their faces over and over again with Thanksgiving dinner and Kari has to grill up a bunch of mystery meat, Jamie and Adam are off hanging with Alton, blowing up popcorn and cruising around San Francisco in a Cadillac. Either way, it’s a great episode, and it’s just as much fun as you’d think it would be, seeing the MythBusters team up with Alton Brown.

If you want to mix it up at Thanksgiving this year, and perhaps skip the traditional turkey, Nature, the International Weekly Journal of Science, gives us some instructions on how to eat a Triceratops — if you were a Tyrannosaurus Rex, that is.

If you want to follow along at home, much like Picture Pages of long ago, check out Nature‘s article. There are plenty of visual diagrams. I am giving you a several week lead time for Thanksgiving, though, because I hear Triceratops are kind of hard to find.

Of course, there is recent news that the Triceratops may never have existed, but rather was just a young version of the Torosaurus. That might be true, but maybe we can still use the word “Triceratops,” like we call a baby sheep a lamb.

If Triceratops for Thanksgiving doesn’t appeal, if perhaps you prefer your tofurkey or other non-fleshy meal, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy a Triceratops. Here’s my favorite song from Kindergarten (1978):

OK, everyone, wake up from your self-induced food coma and pay attention, because it’s time to announce a winner of and provide a solution to the Puzzle of the Week. First, let’s rehash the original puzzle, which was to decode these corny riddles and provide solutions:

Now this looks like a mess but I did provide two clues: The words Miles Standish and Play Fair were in bold. That was a hint that the code was created using the Playfair cipher and the key “Miles Standish.” What’s the Playfair cipher you ask? It was created by uber-geek Charles Wheatstone — yes, the one the Wheatstone Bridge was named after — who was also the inventor of the stereoscope and the English concertina.

To decode the message first make a 5 x 5 matrix. Start by filling in the key word skipping duplicate letters. Then fill the remaining letters in alphabetical order, skipping the letter Q, you could also skip the letter J and substitute all J’s in the message with the letter I. This is the matrix for the puzzle: